Welcome back to Movie Recapped. Today I will show you an action, drama,
horror film from 2016, titled The Thinning. Spoilers ahead! Watch out and take care.
In the near future, the U.N. requires countries to cut their population by 5% every year in
order to combat overpopulation. America gives its students a standardized test every year,
and executes the students with the lowest scores. The test is called the 10-241 or The Thinning.
In Austin Texas, students prepare for the Thinning, which takes place in 18 hours.
Simon and his older sister, Laina, sit at a desk in his room as Laina tries to mentor him.
Their younger siblings, Corrine and Joey sit on the bed playing games.
Even with Laina’s help, Simon gets frustrated and says he can’t learn enough before the test.
He asks Laina for something and gives her money in exchange for a contact lens that he can use
to cheat. When he tries it on, it displays the answers to the math problems in his notebook.
She reminds him that he has to destroy it after the test. Laina then receives a call from Dr.
Perkash, who tells her that her mom had been trying to get discharged from the hospital against
medical advice. She asks the doctor to stall her mom and tells her siblings that they have to go.
At the hospital, Laina intercepts her mom signing herself out. The doctor pulls Laina aside and
reveals that her mom is only getting worse. Even though they can’t treat her if she goes home,
he explains that making her comfortable might be the most they can do for her. At the Governor’s
mansion, just 12 hours until the Thinning, Blake passes a few bodyguards in the hallway. He offers
to get them something from the kitchen, but they decline. Instead, Blake sneaks out of the house to
his car where he finds his girlfriend, Ellie. She startles him, and jokes that the same trick always
works on him. When Blake insists that this time would be the last, they sober, remembering the
next day’s test. Ellie refuses to talk about it and instead decides to show him something that she
insists is secret. She leads him to the Bilski’s mansion, where they strip and swim in the pool.
Afterwards, they kiss in the car until Ellie admits that she’s scared about the test.
Then Vince, one of the bodyguards, catches them and brings Blake back to his dad. Blake’s dad,
Governor Redding, lectures his son and tells him that while it’s okay to have fun, that he has to
pick better moments. He insists that Ellie is a distraction that Blake can’t afford until he gets
through tomorrow’s test, and his final test next year. After that, Blake can be distracted for the
rest of his life. Governor Redding gives Blake a hug before he leaves the room. Three hours before
the Thinning, guards patrol a militaristic school surrounded in chain-link fences,
barbed wire, and cameras. Students approach the facility, watched by guards in black masks. Simon
bumps into another student, drops his contact lens, and is unable to find it. The guard orders
him to keep moving. Blake approaches Laina as she watches students saying goodbye to their parents.
He asks for a study guide but she explains that she gave the last one away. Kellan, her friend,
asks about Blake, but she insists that she barely knows him. The guards check students for cheating
devices, and when one guilty student is discovered they chase him down and catch him with a net.
Kellan uses his dad’s security access to view the security footage and sends it to
a reporter he claims to know, named Wendy Banks. He explains that he has her email,
though she doesn’t seem to respond to his tips. Inside the school, Blake tries to comfort Ellie.
Fifteen minutes before the test begins, the guards lock down the school. The students gather in their
classrooms and teachers review the rules. Miss Birch tells her students that she’s proud of them,
and that the questions are tough but not meant to trick them. She also insists that there’s always a
chance. A second teacher, Mr. Glass also goes over the rules and reminds the students that the test
is an accurate aptitude assessment. He then orders them to begin and the lights in the classroom dim.
Each student picks up a tablet and begins to take the test with the tablets lighting up their faces.
The teachers warn the students when they have a minute remaining, then announce the end of the
test. As the students wait for their results, some show signs of stress. They squirm in their seats,
cry, or look uncomfortable. Kellan is amongst them. Eventually, names of the
students who failed are read out. With each name called, a student is removed. Some cooperate,
some beg, others require force. Kellan is relieved that he passed, but Ellie fails.
The remaining students are congratulated for passing and released to the rec room.
Laina sees Simon being led away with the failed students and Blake calls his dad to beg for him to
do something to save Ellie. But, his dad insists that he has to obey the law. Blake gets angry and
slams the locker. He runs after them and attacks a guard with a fire extinguisher. He tells Ellie
to run as the guards are distracted, but she is stopped by the crowd and caught. One year later,
the next test is 24 hours away. Laina sits at a table with her two younger siblings, they’re
surrounded by boxes and one holds a pamphlet that shows that her mother has passed away.
Miss Birch visits to bring the family some extra casserole and tries to comfort Laina about the
fact that Corrine would be taking her first test. Meanwhile, Blake works out in his room.
He still has a picture of Ellie pinned to his wall. He begins to record a video on a tablet,
saying that if someone was watching it, he would already be dead. Three hours before the test,
Laina quizzes Corrine as they approach the school and hugs her before sending her inside. Governor
Redding discusses plans for an announcement with Vince, checking that everything is ready. Then, he
checks in with Blake. He tries to convince Blake that nothing could be done about Ellie, but Blake
dismisses him. Blake leaves for school and Vince sees him put a package in a mailbox along the way.
Laina and Kellan meet up at the school and talk about the fact that this is their last test.
Kellan admits that he is nervous but recognizes that Laina probably isn’t because of how smart she
is. Instead, she’s more nervous about Corrine than herself. On the way inside, Kellan runs into Wade,
a quarterback that goes on to bully another kid. They wonder if he’s actually smart enough to have
survived this long. Fifteen minutes before the test, the school is locked down again.
At the mansion, Vince approaches Governor Redding about his son and shows him the package Blake had
tried to deliver. Inside is Blake’s tablet where he recorded a video explaining his
plan to intentionally fail the test. In the video he explains that if his dad wants to
stand by this system, he’d have to stand by the system that killed his son. The Governor demands
for his son to be brought home, but the school is locked down and he throws a chair in frustration.
Then he tells the other bodyguard to leave the room. Back at the facility,
Blake waits to take his test and a dark-haired girl named Sarah looks at Mr. Glass.
She’d slept with him to try to get a passing score. He doesn’t meet her gaze.
In a classroom of younger kids, Miss Cole shows her students a video before their first test.
The video is created by a company called Assuru Global and consists of a cartoon Earth explaining
why the test had been implemented, as a way to deal with overpopulation. It lists how some other
countries killed their elderly or restricted the amount of children a couple could have, but that
America only lets the smart kids live there, allowing it to become the best country again.
The video portrays the kids that fail the test as merely helping the planet to feel better.
Miss Cole steps outside to take a minute for herself, a guard tells her that someone else
can give the test if she’s not up for it, but she declines the offer. She returns to
the classroom as the kids finish the video and clap. She directs them to take the exciting test
they’d been practicing for. The older students also start the test. From the control room,
Mason King watches over them and receives a call, which he answers. Blake finishes his test early in
the classroom and Mr. Glass notices. Amongst the smaller kids, Nathan raises his hand for help on
a question but Miss Cole isn’t allowed to help him so she tells him to do his best. Once the test is
finished, Miss Cole tells the students to stand up and follow the leader if their name is called.
The teachers read out the names of the failed students. Among them are Nathan,
Sarah, and Laina, but not Blake. Mason calls the Mayor to confirm that the transfer was successful
and that Blake is safe. The mayor then approves the commencement of the Thinning. Blake watches
as the failed kids are sent down the hall. Miss Birch runs to intercept a guard and insists that
Laina is the best student she’s had and that she can’t believe that Laina could’ve failed.
The guard checks with his superiors, but they insist that there’s no problem and he’s told to
send Laina off. The teacher holds onto Laina for a moment and slips her a keycard, reminding her that
there’s always a chance and telling her to get away. In the rec room, students are congratulated
for making it. They eat and dance to music. Miss Birch spots Mr. Glass flirting with another
dark-haired student. Elsewhere, Governor Redding takes steps on stage for a big announcement.
He starts by talking about all the ways he’s improved things during his time as Governor.
He talks about the difficult but necessary decisions that had to be made. At the school,
his speech plays on a TV at the party. Blake sees it and leaves. As the Governor continues
to discuss how the Thinning is not a barbaric practice, but is instead leading in innovation and
an effort to make the population the best it can be, the failed kids are being led down a hallway.
They are instructed to take off their clothes and to prepare for decontamination. Laina slips
the keycard into her mouth to hide it. As Blake begins to make his way through the hallways of
the school, his dad announces his candidacy for president. The failed kids are given new clothes,
then led to a room with a few rows of chairs. They are each cuffed to a chair and the surrounding
guards draw syringes. Some of the kids begin to panic. In the hallway, Blake acts hurt to lure
a guard towards him then knocks him out. Then, he makes his way to the control room and sneaks
inside after Mason leaves it. He tries to use the computer but it requires a login, so instead he
shuts off the power to the school right as Mason has discovered the unconscious guard.
Some of the failed kids are freed from their restraints and the guards try to regain control.
Laina escapes during the chaos, opening the door with Miss Birch’s keycard.
Mason calls for Kellan’s dad, Victor Wood, to be sent to the control room to fix the downed system.
The guards fetch him from the party, insisting that it is just a minor power outage to the rest
of the guests. Mason then checks on the failed kids, who are back under the guards’ control.
He asks if they’d done a headcount, and discovers they hadn’t. They discover that Laina is missing.
A guard notices Laina trying to get out a door, but she introduces herself as Miss
Birch and tells him that she’d called him when she’d seen a student run down the stairwell.
Once he turns his back to her, she attacks. Blake shows up and the two of them take the guard down.
Laina and Blake talk and Laina insists that she couldn’t have failed the test. Blake amidst that
he failed on purpose, but that his dad got him out. Laina realizes that something is off and
when Blake sets off an alarm they climb into a vent to escape. Mason decides that the school will
stay in lockdown until the situation is resolved, even as they surpass the time where parents were
expecting to see their children. He hears about another guard who’d been attacked by someone who
claimed to be a teacher, so he calls for all the teachers to be brought to a holding room.
Laina and Blake talk about Laina selling cheats to desperate kids for the test.
Blake judges her for taking advantage of them until she reveals that it was a desperate attempt
to pay for her mom’s treatments, which still wasn’t enough. Blake apologizes for judging her.
They start heading towards the server room through the vents. Governor Redding’s interview is
interrupted by news of the prolonged shutdown at the school and the news anchor asks him about it.
The governor stumbles without any information, but insists that things will be resolved soon.
Mason addresses the teachers and tells them to present their IDs and keycards. The governor calls
him to get details about the situation and angrily tells them to figure it out quickly. Blake and
Laina continue through the vents until Blake falls through one and into a pool below. Laina jumps in
after him to save him and gets him to the edge of the pool where she resuscitates him with CPR.
They get dry clothes from the lockers and change, turning their backs to each other for privacy.
Laina finds another vent and they climb back in. In the rec room, the students who passed begin
to get impatient with the guards and one of the guards beats up a student. Kellan records it on
his phone and sends it to Wendy. Laina and Blake reach the outside of the server room,
but the keycard falls out of Laina’s pocket. With the keycard on the ground below the vent, they get
to a science classroom where Laina gets a magnet to fish for the key. They make too much noise
and as a guard approaches, Laina is able to get back into the vent while Blake stays in the room.
He tries to hide, but the guard catches him. When Laina tries fishing for the key,
a guard notices and grabs it. But the guard turns out to be Blake in a guard’s uniform. He tells
her that he’ll head towards the Thinning. In the holding room, Miss Birch suggest to Mr. Glass that
they get a drink together and as they flirt she steals his keycard. Miss Birch then shows Mason
her ID and Mr. Glass’s keycard to take suspicion off of herself. When Mr. Glass doesn’t have his,
Mason thinks that he’s the traitor. Laina arrives in the server room and finds a computer. She
tries to use her keycard, but it requires Mason’s password. She messages Kellan to get his help only
to find out he’s offline. Kellan receives Laina’s message right as his dad returns the power.
He sends her a video of Mason typing in his password, allowing her to copy it and get in.
She checks Corinne’s test score first and is relieved to see that she passed with an 86%.
Next, she checks hers, to find that she got a 98% but still failed. Meanwhile, Wade had passed with
a 42%, and Blake passed with a 15%. She also checks Ellie’s score and finds that she failed,
but got a score of 88%. She sees news coverage of Governor Redding claiming that Laina,
after failing her test, had attacked several guards, killing two of them, and escaped.
He places the blame for the shutdown on her. Meanwhile, Wendy sees the video that Kellan
sent of the guard beating up a passing student and she realises that what is happening doesn’t
match the official story. She responds to Kellan and broadcasts the footage. When Laina realises
that Kellan sent out footage from within the school she sends him images of the score.
Then, Mason and Victor spot her on the cameras and she runs. Blake finds the Thinning and tries to
trick the guards into bringing the failed students to the recreation hall, but they won’t accept
orders from anyone besides Mason so he tries to fight the guards. Laina is caught by Mason,
insisting she has proof that she passed but he sends her to the Thinning where she finds that
Blake has been subdued. Kellan receives Laina’s proof of the test scores, both hers and Ellie’s
so he sends the images to Wendy. Wendy reports on the documentation she’d received about the
falsified test scores. She reveals that Laina failed despite having the highest score in the
school while Blake, son of the Governor, had passed despite receiving the lowest score.
At the mansion, Vince insists that Governor Redding has to shut this down and let Laina go,
but Redding insists there’s one more move. Mason calls to ask for his approval to commence the
thinning, which he denies, saying that the list needs to be revised. Once changes are made,
Laina is freed and told that she had passed, she goes to Blake and kisses him.
She is then forced from the room and Blake is forced into her chair. Wade is also taken to the
thinning. With varying levels of panic from the kids, the guards approach and inject them. Blake
loses consciousness, and the school is taken out of lockdown. Laina reunites with her little sister
outside, hugging her with tears in her eyes. She's also joined by Miss Birch. Kellan hugs his dad,
both smiling and relieved. The parents whose kids don’t return to them begin to mourn as
Wendy reports that Mason King has been taken in for questioning regarding his involvement with the
altered test scores. Wendy’s report continues that suspicions of Redding’s involvement were
discounted once it was discovered that his son had been amongst the failed students.
Redding announces that he will help to investigate the occurrences and continues by using Blake’s
failure to appeal to voters that he was just like them. A large truck approaches a new facility.
The failed students, including Blake, are lowered into the building by elevator. They find a factory
that builds the tablets the tests are taken on, where previous failed students are put to work.